


Until The World Is Mended

by Percevale



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Gen, character tags to be added as I write more chapters, not beta read lmao, past/referenced Clefdraki, this is a Kondraki Is Dead Universe tho, warning for vaguely referenced 4231 stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Percevale/pseuds/Percevale
Summary: A dead languages expert working for the Foundation discovers a new section of the Erikesh Codex. The Scarlet King and his soldiers close in on reality. Alto Clef finally has to bond with his weird demon daughter, via Apocalypse Road Trip. (Back from hiatus, maybe.)
Relationships: Draven Kondraki/James Talloran
Comments: 22
Kudos: 52





	1. where the sign will be shown

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what happened here. I was supposed to be doing internship applications and then I blacked out for two hours and ended up with a fourteen page outline for a pulpy action fantasy SCP fic. Also, I couldn't think of a good way to name chapters so I'm just going to shuffle my writing playlist and choose random lines for each one, I guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from _Caesar_ by the Oh Hellos. Nothing further to note except what's in the overall work notes, other than that this is just sort of a set-up chapter that I typed in a frenzy a while after midnight and then decided to post unedited because I always second-guess myself with fanfic and end up deleting it.

Dr. Alto Clef was not in the habit of visiting peoples’ _houses._ As a rule, he didn’t care all that much for being inside nice, normal houses, as opposed to the couch in the back of his part-time office with the coffee machine and the overloaded power strip that was probably only kept from surging with a little bit of semi-conscious reality bending. He especially didn’t care for this house, a small Foundation-owned property with a bright green door and an empty glass bottle still sitting, overlooked, in a corner of the porch. 

He knocked on the door, and decided that he had just been passing through when he heard about the unpleasantry with the spears, and that a Mobile Task Force he vaguely recognized the name of had been involved, and he was just coming to get some information behind the Foundation’s back, so to speak. Never mind that he was cleared for that information regardless.

It was Talloran who opened the door, froze for a moment, and then started trying to close it again.

Clef stuck his foot in the door. Talloran had not been particularly strong before, and was now not much more than a mess of bones and scar tissue in a sweater.

“Still skittish, huh? I’m just gonna talk to Draven about the cult thing.” 

Talloran, mustering a very surprising amount of force to hold the door closed as Clef pushed on it, reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, holding it up and snapping a picture. “Well, it’s you,” he said after a moment. “Though I’m pretty sure I still don’t want to let you in.”

“What showed up on the picture?”

“A moth. At a glance I’d say death’s-head.”

“Clef?” 

“Draven! Tell your boyfriend to stop pushing on this door before he breaks something.”

Through the cracked door, he could see Draven Kondraki, in a sweatshirt, MTF combat pants, and slippers. There was a large bandage holding a pad over his left eye. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

At this point, Talloran sighed and stepped back from the door, in a rapid movement Clef was pretty sure would’ve dumped him on his face if his reflexes had been just slightly rustier. “Thanks,” he grumbled. “Talloran, nice to see your hair’s growing back, it doesn’t always do that after those hardcore amnestic treatments. Draven. Got the initial incident report that you’d gotten a knife to the face, and more importantly that someone stole one of the spears.”

Draven blinked, slowly. Like it was something to do to fill the pause.

“What, you were worried? Fucker missed my eye, I’m just off duty for a couple days.” He jerked a thumb towards the couch. “Sit down.” 

Clef sprawled out, and Talloran sighed and scooped up a stack of papers from an end table. “I don’t have the security clearance to hear this,” he said, but didn’t leave the room. He just shuffled the papers and pulled out a pen that’d been slipped into his belt loop, circling something on a graph. “Whatever,” said Clef. “Tell me about the raid. Original thing said it was GOC, but they’re working with us on the Scarlet King stuff. I would’ve heard if it was different.” He glanced around the room- it had been redone since he was last here. More lamps put in, more than you’d expect in any house. Flashlight. Someone here was scared of the dark, but given the line of work Draven and Talloran are in it could be either of them. The bookshelves, reorganized. No pulp novels or horror on the shelves in the living room. A small silver laptop charging on the desk. It looked like Draven was using it to write up an after action report.

Draven picked up a plastic bag of mini marshmallows and upended it into his coffee cup. “You know,” said Clef, “There’s easier ways to flavor a drink. Your dad used marshmallows because the butterflies liked to eat them out of that- that stupid- out of his stupid college fencing club mug, the red one with the chip out of it?”

There was a pause. “Okay, fine. What happened yesterday?”

Draven sat down at the computer. “You’ll be able to find out as soon as I submit this,” he said, taking a sip of marshmallow coffee. 

“If it’s Scarlet King, it’ll go through the Council long before they let me look at the report. Also, I think I’ve gotta do another psych evaluation before they let me have the King files again.”

Draven sighed.

“We were escorting an artifact transfer when we got jumped by eight hostiles. They took out the first armored transport at range, with some kind of souped-up rocket launcher, and then closed in. Our first radio for backup identified them as GOC because three of them were in the uniform, but for the official report I’m revising it to, uh. Children of the Scarlet King. They killed Rosales in the close-up fighting, smashed one of the Euclids. The spears were all in seperate convoys, we had -E with us. The convoy transporting -D sustained heavier casualties and the Children ran off with it, but because -E damages the wielder, Sep was able to finish off the guy who’d grabbed it without much problem. Not before he’d chucked a few fireballs at us and melted a few of the lower priority artifacts. There’s a team doing a damage report on the other artifacts we were hauling, but most of those were decoys.”

He took a long drink from the mug and typed a few more sentences, then furrowed his brow and picked at the backspace key. “Always forget we’re supposed to leave out specific place names in these,” he muttered. “New regulations.”

“So let some idiot in Records take care of redacting whatever dump in Nebraska you were in when you got jumped,” Clef shrugged.

“Ohio. It _was_ kind of a shithole, though, bunch of Confederate flags everywhere. Again, in like, the midwest. Whole place is getting dosed with amnestics because of the pyrokinesis situation.”

“Nice of them,” said Talloran, his mouth twitching in a movement that was probably a smile, though rather constrained by the scar tissue and stitching that split is face in half from the mouth, “To jump you in a town small enough that the Foundation cleanup teams could dose the whole place.”

Clef sighed. “So the Children of the Scarlet King have one of the spears.”

“I hear there’s a joint GOC-Foundation-Horizon Initiative movement getting underway to hunt it down. Guess the big guns decided after the War of the Flesh that working together can actually be pretty handy, so Horizon’s sending a couple Malleus units to add military force.” Draven moved to click _send_ on the report, then doubled back to the spellcheck. He’d managed to spell “unit” wrong while talking, and he swore gently and fixed it. “Actually pretty scary bastards, the Malleus guys.”

“I heard a lot of them opt for bladed weapons,” Talloran added. He made a note on his files. “The standard procedure for redacting names is everything above Level Three, right? I’m still working on the memories on how to properly file stuff.”

“Malleus thinks they’re hot shit,” said Clef, “But I’d like to see them face off with the Serpent. Standard procedure for anything is writing whatever the hell you want and-”

“Letting Records deal with it, yes,” said Talloran. “Should’ve known better than to ask you.” He frowned. “You know I’m entirely unaffected by that weird thing you do with your eyes, right?”

Clef laughed. His left eyeball spun like a slot machine- green, brown, blue- and then he sat up. “Well, I’ve assured myself that Draven isn’t dying of fatal stabbed-itis, and that we’re all basically fucked if the Children get another one of those spears. My work here is done.”

“I mean, unless you want to watch me launch my old motorcycle off a cliff,” said Draven, snapping shut the laptop and standing up. “Been meaning to figure out a way to get rid of it for a while, and I feel like doing something mildly stupid this afternoon.”

Immediately, Clef’s eye snapped back into place, Bunsen burner blue. “Coward. Blow it up instead.”

* * *

The linguist hadn’t always worked for the Foundation, but he’d been involved with different normalcy protection groups for long enough that he knew “archaeologist cataloging dig site findings begins suddenly acting erratic” was good enough cause for an investigation team to be sent out.

“Dr. Stellan?” he said brightly, as the door opened. Eilhardt Stellan looked haggard, with at least three days’ worth of stubble on his face. He was wearing glasses, though the linguist noticed with some concern that the lenses had been broken out. He was glad to have an agent with him, though he wasn’t _unable_ to defend himself. “I- we are here to ask a few questions about your archaeological dig. I understand you’ve found some Sumerian tablets?” 

Stellan twitched nervously, looking back over his shoulder. “They’re strange,” he muttered. The linguist nodded sympathetically and held out a small bottle of a dark brown liquid, flashing a badge in his other hand.

“For your nerves. We’re here about those calls you were making, but it can wait a moment.”

It was a testament to the archaeologist’s anxiety that he asked no more questions before bolting the amnestic/tranquilizer cocktail and collapsing to the floor. The agent and the linguist exchanged a glance, and entered the house. The tablet was set out on a table, and there was blood on it. A lamp in the corner was the only light source, and the linguist flicked the lightswitch in the apartment a few times to no avail.

The agent pulled out a few scanners and began checking the area for anomalous activity. “I think one of the lightbulbs has been smashed,” she said. “Look at all this glass on the floor.”

Meanwhile, the linguist walked over to the table, his combat boots crunching on the scattered glass and wire. There was a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh next to the tablet, and a page of notes. Frowning, the linguist placed a finger on the tablet and began to pick out words. Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform had a hell of a learning curve, being symbol-based, but at this point he was quick enough with it to be able to get the gist of most texts from an overview.

“There’s a little bit of ambient weirdness, but I think it might be akiva radiation,” said the agent, behind him. “We don’t have the tech to get a clear read on akivas right now, though.”

The linguist was a pale man, and in the habit of wearing a good deal of makeup. Despite this, the agent noticed the color drain from his face as he peered down at the tablet. “Laura,” he said. “I think you had better call the most important person you have access to, because the Epic of Gilgamesh is not, generally speaking, a text which references the seals of the Scarlet King.”


	2. drawn to the blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then it shall come to pass that the earth and the mountains will shake so violently that trees will be torn up by the roots, the mountains will topple down, and all bonds and fetters will be broken and snapped.  
> -The Prose Edda
> 
> Alternatively: The linguist starts work on the Erikesh Codex, at the same time that it becomes suddenly, alarmingly relevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize until I reviewed 2317 that Kain Pathos Crow is the level 4 researcher mentioned in it, so he's been added to the work tags. I figure probably Clef and Crow are the highest-ranked Foundation staff besides the O5s who can access that thing? Just assume they are.

“I need clearance for the Erikesh Codex,” said the linguist. He was somewhat uncomfortable speaking into the camera of his computer, waiting for a text response to scroll across the screen. Apparently, he lacked the clearance even to know who he was talking to. 

_You’ve refused to work on the Codex previously._

“The situation has changed. I was able to read a section of the Codex, and based on my current access level to Foundation files I have some pressing concerns. Unfortunately, in order to follow up I require access to the Scarlet King documentation, as well as the rest of the Codex and our current translations.” In the pause, he nervously chewed on the edges of his gold-lipstick mouth. He knew- _vaguely-_ the projects that were associated with the Codex, and the underside of his tongue tasted bitter.

_You’re scheduled to receive a course of amnestics tomorrow. Surely that would be easier?_

The linguist pressed his lips together. “Who else will you have translating the new portion of the Codex? There aren’t that many cuneiformists in the world, and while I know from the linguistics department files that we have a few skips who can read it, _rumor_ would have it that I’m one of your more stable options.”

_That’s above your clearance level._

“You wanted me on the Erikesh Codex before,” said the linguist, throwing propriety out the window. “Nothing has changed since then, except that we have the possibility to gather new information about the King.” There was a long pause before the cursor on his screen moved again.

_Clearance levels for individual anomalies will be discussed with you later. For now, begin decoding the new tablet._

It was another two days before he got called into the site office to receive his clearance codes. Access to a set of notes on the Scarlet King from Dr. Montauk, Level 2 clearance for 231, 2317, 3838, and 4231. Access to the rest of the Erikesh Codex, both the Foundation translation and what they had of various original tablets and paper reproductions from raids on the Children.

After a long time looking over the files, he frowned and shot an email to the Level 4 supervising researcher on 2317 asking for more relevant information. He reviewed the 231 information- still heavily redacted, still cryptic- and went to the bathroom to be sick.

He took a deep breath, dug up a few dictionaries and put on his headphones, and began to do what he did best.

* * *

Clef hadn’t had nightmares about being Francis in a long time. A few years. They’d come back for a couple months, after Kondraki died and he was just a little less able to force everything deep down into static. Hell, he barely even dreamed most nights.

So it was weird, wasn’t it, when he woke up in the nightmare-sweat with old bruises suddenly unspooling purple-blue on his skin for the _third night in a row._ “Fuck,” he said, quietly and to no one in particular, as he switched on the light and waited for his heart rate to slow down. His office. His gun underneath the sofa cushions. His desk with the Keurig cups and the half-empty thing of whiskey. Name plate, Alto Clef (the symbol, dark on metal.)

Clef had a text message.

_O5 council says we need to talk about 2317 tomorrow. I beg of you to actually show up._

_-kpc_

He checked the time. It was 5:15 am. The message had been sent shortly before midnight. 

_where_

  
If he closed his eyes he thought he could feel something moving through the ambient Hume field. The breaking of a chain? Or just stray threads of paranoia, from the nightmares? He imagined that when that seventh chain snapped the reverberations alone would start to shred creation- but he was sure not to imagine _too_ hard.

His phone buzzed again.

_There. no activity as such, I think. Or else we would be dead already._

Clef absentmindedly rubbed the old-new bruise that covered his wrist, and the one that went up his arm in five fingerprints with sharp nails. He tasted clay and iron-brittle blood.

_be there. 10 am, or when I can catch a flight_

...He wore a shirt with long sleeves.

> INCIDENT REPORT:  
> SCP-1844 experienced a containment breach at 08:01 this morning, resulting in the loss of 17 monitoring staff members, the partial destruction of the surrounding site, and the escape of three hostile entities. Two of the entities were terminated, the third escaped and is currently being hunted down by both Foundation and GOC forces. Details to follow.

> INCIDENT REPORT:  
> Site-25 experienced a catastrophic systems failure at 06:52:30, resulting in multiple Keter-class breaches and 53 Foundation casualties. The failure appears to have stemmed from the malfunction of all electronic systems on site, including the shutdown of all communication for seven minutes following the initial breach. The arrival of MTF Alpha-One, “Red Right Hand,” was required to recontain two of the escaped entities. Further investigation is underway. Site-25 has been evacuated until the cause of the systems failure is more clearly understood.
> 
> * * *

-AN INTERLUDE-

Meri prayed. She had been given a breviary for her nineteenth birthday, which made her prayers a little more varied, but the pattern remained the same. Lauds, at dawn. “When Site-17’s main lights came on” was a loose interpretation of dawn, but the Foundation was nothing if not regular. In the current liturgy you could pray the daytime prayer at any of the minor hours. _Deus, in adiutorium meam intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina._ Vespers. _Deus, in adiutorium meam intende._ Compline. _Deus, in adiutorium meam intende._

In between, the Rosary. Half an hour to pray all the way around, fifty-three Hail Marys and six Our Fathers and the prayers that went in between. ( _Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae; vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exsules, filii Evae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes, in hac larimarum valle._ )

Once around just to get the feel for it, because Meri felt that, with some special exceptions aside, one had to put oneself into the proper mindset for prayer. Once for her father, who she understood to work at the Foundation. He had left her two more letters, since her sixteenth birthday. Once for her mother’s soul, though judging by her thick-furred goat’s legs, Meri was fairly sure this was a wasted effort. Once for the Abbess, who had died two years before. 

Praying was like hunger. Prayer _is_ hunger, through her ivory wolf-teeth. 

Once for the Foundation, because the women who were in charge of monitoring her cell had sad and hollow eyes. Because she sometimes heard of other people in the humanoid containment wing, and sometimes she heard of things that weren’t _people_ at all. Things that were much worse, that made the guards relieved that all they had to do was watch her pray and read and sleep.

She had not taken Communion in a long time, but in her sleep sometimes her mouth welled with pomegranate-dark blood. There was too much open space between her ribs.

One more time, with feeling.

 _Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix._ _  
__Ut digne efficiamur promissionibus Christi._

After lunch, she usually read. Sometimes she listened to music. She’d taken to asking the guards for book recommendations, to get a broad range of genres, but she _did_ still have a particular liking for fantasy. It came with the territory of reading a lot of C.S. Lewis at a young age. (She admitted she was not a terribly quick reader.)

Meri prayed. For herself. For her father, whose face she did not remember save for- no. And for that girl she dreamed now and again, who was in pain always- who was upon the table- who was related to her, in some way. She was sure of that.

Cloven-hooved green-eyed Meri prayed, through her sharp teeth.

* * *

Two years before, the Foundation had created a passage through the salt pan of SCP-2317-Prime, into the vast cavern below. The stone above had been surprisingly thin- just a crust of salt, over a hundred kilometers of seething space. The entity inside had shown no sign of stirring in years, not even straining against the chains, and from the previous records of the site it seemed that it had never strained against the barbed and bone-white chains which wrapped around its body.

They simply...broke.

The pillars were of white marble polished to the sheen of glass, and the sky was electrum-grey, and the salt pan was silver-white in the dry, everywhere-light. But when the Foundation finally opened a hole into SCP-2317-H, the entity inside was the color of blood. 

Not fresh blood. That would have been too obvious, Clef supposed. But just about everyone who looked down into that pit (not that there were many people with the clearance for it) identified the color as the thick brown-red of blood that has not quite dried into your clothes. 

Foundation staff saw a lot of blood. 

It was almost always darker than you expected, the first few times. 

“I’m confident I do not have to go over the security protocols for 2317-Prime with any of you,” says the man who introduced himself as O5-4. Whether it’s the real 04 is irrelevant, because his security clearance lights up as Level 5 when he scans it and the locks along the edge of the door click open. “We’ve ascertained that travel back and forth through 2317 itself has no adverse affects on the chain- humans are simply too insignificant to even register against the size of everything else here.”

Kain wrinkled his nose. “I hate the way this place spells,” he said. 

“I smell salt, and maybe blood,” said Clef. 

“I smell something worse,” said Kain. The short hair on the back of his neck was standing up- before Clef started hanging out with Kain Pathos Crow, he’d kind of thought this kind of bristly dog-snarl was something you only saw in cartoons.

“Yeah, Hume levels in this dimension are real weird.” His voice was low as he stepped across the threshold- there was the constant fear, here, that if you breathed too loudly you’d wake it up. Even though it hadn’t moved, even when parts of the cavern had collapsed onto it. The trouble was that sometimes, it _breathed._ Clef glanced at Kain again, and figured that if _his_ hackles could stand on end, they probably would be.

04 was heading straight for the pulley system that would lower you into the pit. “Six and Seven would have come,” he said, smooth and not quite so quietly as Clef, “But there’s a breach happening at Site-03 and they were rather busy this morning.”

The nothing sky had, apparently, somehow produced rain- water stood in pools, ten or twenty feet wide, on the crystalline salt flat, making reflective mirrors that shattered their reflections in all directions. It had taken Clef a moment to realize that it _was_ water, and that the salt had not just been somehow struck into glass, and he came to a sudden halt at the edge of the pool as Kain splashed along the edge of it.

Kain stopped and tilted his head. “Will you be-”

“Don’t want to get my shoes wet,” Clef muttered, and walked around the edge of the pool. There was, as always, a soft wind blowing, and the surface of the water moved. It was difficult to tell how deep it was.

They stood on the platform, five-hundred-foot cords placed on either side to lower them into the pit. “As both of you have doubtless figured out,” said 04, smoothing the front of his shirt, “The chains- or more properly, _chain-_ which currently holds this entity is not made of steel. It is made of bone. And our most recent reports indicate that the bone is beginning to loose integrity.”

“Visibly?” 

“In places.” He pulled a lever, and the cords unspooled- not all the way down, just enough that in the dim light they could see the chain. Each link was- hell, probably close to sixty meters across. And several of them, when 04 pointed, looked damaged. Translucent, almost, with the edges starting to splinter away. One link, lower down, appeared to have had small holes eaten into it.

The pit smelled of sulfur.

“Well, shit,” said Clef, quietly. Kain made a somewhat futile attempt to cover his nose with one paw.

“We have reassigned multiple teams to preparation,” said 04, pulling the lever to begin the platform rising again. In the darkness below, the creature that was SCP-2317-K and might or might not be a face of the Scarlet King stirred ever so slightly, and the broken chains of bone scraped against the rock face. “Of course, when the chain breaks we will detonate the local warheads, though that’s not a sure thing. All other skips related to the Scarlet King are being monitored. Medical personnel have concluded that there are no changes in 231-7’s condition thus far, but there is the matter of the Children stealing an instance of the King’s Spears.”

“You think it’s related?” asked Kain. “The seismic scans have shown the chain in this condition for at least a week.”

“Non-linear cause and effect,” suggested Clef. "The, uh, ripples- fuck it, you know what I mean." He was taking very deep breaths and he was thinking about his office, and he was not thinking about the dreams he had long ago where he had seen the thing that moved in the pit, the color of old, old blood. 

They reached the surface, the salt pan gleaming in the light from nowhere. Silver and crisp and smelling only a little bit of raw, dark things. The wind broke their reflections into shards of light. The door stood in the distance, between two of the marble columns.

“Shit,” said Clef again, very distantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only valid Scarlet King canon is actually 2317-J, because it's the funniest.  
> Following the pattern of "putting my spotify likes on shuffle and just going for the first ting that comes up," title is from the sufjan stevens song of the same name. I'm doing a pretentious thing where I don't refer to The Linguist by name because I haven't actually decided on a first name for him.
> 
> Also, I really, really like salt pans.


	3. take up your arms, sons and daughters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Draven order takeout during the slow end of the world.  
> James Martin Talloran is three million years old, and in a few of those hundreds of thousands of lifetimes he found out more than anyone is supposed to about the Scarlet King. (Some people, the amnestics just don't work.)

> INCIDENT REPORT: 
> 
> At 23:01:09 last night, all normalcy protection programs in North America recorded an enormous distortion in Hume field integrity lasting approximately 42 seconds. The GOC willingly opened contact with the Foundation several hours afterwards, reporting spikes in reality bender activity across the continent. Negotiation with the GOC is currently open, updates pending. In a presumably related phenomenon, the Department of Tactical Theology reports that over the last five hours, global levels of ambient akiva radiation have been steadily rising. 

* * *

Clef was in the middle of doing nothing very much- skimming a report on the SCP-3838 tribes, who’d apparently been hit hard by the whole reality warping incident. He sat up a little straighter as he came to a redacted section on the file, absentmindedly shoving a Mars bar into his mouth and typing in his clearance codes. 

Someone outside strummed an A major chord. It was slightly off-key. (And not on a ukulele. Guitar?)

And then they strummed again. And again.

“Fuck, I’m _coming,”_ he said. He really needed a new secretary. 

He threw open the door and was somewhat taken aback. In general, Clef prided himself on having one of the weirder fashion senses in the Foundation, or at the very least _tackiest_. It was a good way to distract people when he was doing things he wasn't supposed to be doing.

The person standing in the doorway was wearing, inexplicably, an open tweed jacket and a tie over a band t-shirt, an ankle-length black skirt, and combat boots. And a large quantity of multicolored makeup that, from his admittedly limited knowledge of how makeup was properly applied, hadn’t been. “What the fuck-”

“I need help putting together new containment measures for the Scarlet King.”

“Talk to someone else about it, uh, kiddo.”

They began pulling sheaves of paper out of their bag. “The last urn wasn’t meant for the King,” they said, moving to shove a page of scribbled notes- and a few ancient Sumerian symbols, from the blurred glance he caught of it before backing away- under his nose. 

“Don’t they tell new agents not to bother me while I’m working? Go find whoever’s in charge of your research team-”

“I need to talk to _you,_ ” said Grail, Foundation linguist and current translator of the Erikesh Codex. He took a deep breath and raised his voice slightly. “I retranslated some of the sung parts of the Codex. The ones not written in Sumerian. I think the old translator messed up on the prepositions- it’s nothing _of_ Heaven, not _under._ I have the files from 4231.” He shoved the notes into Dr. Clef’s hand and reached into his folder again. "I know this is a lot of information that-"

There was the sound of a door slamming, and Grail found himself in the hallway outside the staff wing. Several crumpled pages of notes floated through the air around him. The guitar he’d brought with him was missing, and when he scanned himself back into the staff wing, he came up against a prominently empty stretch of wall where Dr. Alto Clef’s office should have been. 

The linguist swore softly, gathering up his scattered notes before squinting sideways at the wall. He rapped on it with his knuckles, trying to see if there was- _a doorknob._ He made a grab for it, but blinked to find himself in the mess hall. Two floors down. With his notes scattered again.

“I will simply do it _myself_ , then,” he muttered, ducking down a hallway and briefly glancing up at the security camera. He pulled his phone out and punched in a number, turning his back to the camera. “Passcode Rev-Nineteen-Six, Grail. Yes, I know. Repentance? Um. Patch me through to McGann, would you?”

* * *

“So, do you want to get takeout for dinner?”

Draven considered this. “World’s ending, James.”

“And nobody on the outside will have noticed it yet,” said James, gesturing to the TV. There was a special report on, about water rights. “Nor will they notice it for some time. But for those of us too stressed to cook, that’s just fine.”

“Bet you Waffle House will still be open if the- uh, red guy breaches.” Draven rubbed the back of his neck, stray coils of hair sticking up from his head. “O5 command made an announcement about tossing the name around if you don’t have the security clearance for it. Something about spreading panic, and making sure that the Level Ones don’t find out about classified documents- but I think it’s a new containment procedure they’re trying. Let me see the menu.”

James handed over his phone and settled onto the couch, looking out the window. “I got shot dead in a Waffle House at 3 am once,” he said, and then his lips curled into a tight grimace. “I was in a couple universes where the- never mind. Order orange chicken for me, please?”

“Sure,” said Draven. He placed the order, with a concerned look at his boyfriend. “James?”

“I don’t believe Montauk does anything,” murmured James. He turned away from the velvet sky outside the window and knitted his fingers together, staring at the way the joints moved beneath the skin. “There was a reality I was in where the Child was born, and the- 3999 killed the- the big guy when he broke through. There was one where the Child was born and it was like, like a shock of sudden joy. There was one where it was _m-”_ He choked and tucked up his knees against his chest, and Draven crossed the room at once. 

“Here, it’s all right, you’re safe.” Beneath his hand, James’ shoulder blades shuddered with badly repressed sobs. After a few minutes he took a hoarse breath and looked up.

“I- Draven, I need to write things down, and I need you to call someone. Anyone.”

“Your ther-”

“No.” James sat up, his face blotchy. (His hair was still so short, growing back in downy curls after it was shaved for his futile rounds of amnestic treatments.) “I need somebody who can _do_ something.”

Draven paused for a second, and only sprang to his feet when James lunged to grab a pen off the dinner table. “You need paper?”

“Yes. My notebook in my room, if you could. It’s already divided into parts. The parts are- oh, that sounds like nonsense.”

“I...I guess I’ll call Clef,” Draven said. When he was little, the important phone numbers had been stuck to the fridge with a magnet. _Call Ms. Stevens if you have a normal emergency and I’m not here,_ his father had said. On one of the good days, when he could plan ahead. _Like if the plumbing breaks. Or I’m gone for a few days and you run out of food. Do NOT,_ he had said, stabbing a finger at the third number on the slip, _call Clef._

 _Then why’s his number on there?_ Draven had asked, not really wanting to call Clef (who was at the time just his father’s half-friend, with the irises that switched around inside of his eyes, who smelled like sweat and lab chemicals- no one that ten-year-old Draven would want in his house on a whim.) 

_Because,_ his father said. _If there’s a monster, and it gets into the house- or if it’s outside, trying to get in, scratching on the door or climbing up to the windows, because there_ are _things that try to get kids like you- and I don’t pick up the phone? Then you call Clef. Anyway, he’ll be on my ass about it if I tell him I gave my kid his number, so don’t bring it up._

Draven leaned against the fridge for a minute and put his forehead against the cold metal for the count of three. You learned that, when you were in the field- if you counted to three, it gave you just enough of a break that even if your body wouldn’t work right, your mind might get put back together enough to pull you through. His hands were shaking. He dialed the number.

* * *

Clef pulled into the driveway not quite eight minutes later, and Draven- having met Kain Pathos Crow only a few times previously, and mostly in passing- had a brief moment of deep, mildly alarmed confusion upon seeing the disoriented labrador retriever who flopped out of the Foundation-issue Jeep right after him.

“Were you already in the area?” he asked, opening the door.

“Nah. First time I’ve consciously messed around with that kind of thing in, uh. Years, probably? But I warped reality a _little_ in order to get here.” Both of his eyes were spinning, the left eyeball gradually slowing to a sedate roll between blue and dark brown. 

Kain added, “After one gets over the initial, ah, disconcerting elements of anomalous faster-than-physics travel, it becomes very practical. I think we might have set a few trees on fire on the way here, but if I could figure out a way to make a slightly more stable version-”

“Like the higher ups would ever let you experiment with reality bending,” Clef said, but he had the good sense to pause upon seeing Talloran crying silently at the dinner table while scribbling onto page after page of a Foundation-issue researcher’s notebook with a desperation- well, a desperation you probably wouldn’t see in most scientists in the real world, but wasn’t exactly uncommon at the Foundation, where you came across some poor fool daily who was racing his own death or deletion from reality in order to finish an abstract. There was untouched Chinese takeout piled on the table next to him.

“Uh, hey. Talloran. Rough evening, I guess- you try dropping some amnestics in booze? Works all right, if they’re decent grade. From the actual eel and all.”

“Clef!” snapped Kain. 

“Oh, are you a therapy dog now?”

Talloran shoved a stack of slightly smudged papers across the table, and Kain walked around to inspect the notes. “I think you should get some rest,” he said. “We can go through what you’ve written and see if it might be useful. Thank you for, ah. For going through this.” He glanced over at Draven, who was standing awkwardly in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded.

Frowning, Clef flipped through the notes. Most of them were blatant security breaches. He could tell that quite a lot of them were from realities where things hadn’t quite lined up properly- a universe which involved 3999 releasing multiple Devourer entities to see what would happen, and the Scarlet King came out on top (and killed Talloran), a universe where the world melted into a primordial soup after 3999 declared itself the King (and killed Talloran), a line where it simply said _researcher talloran is to be contained by seven hooks embedded in his back, connected by chains to the seven pillars which extend down into the space._

"You might want to slow down there," said Clef, looking up at Talloran. "Can't be pleasant. Take some, uh, breaths. Deep breaths."

“Let me see those notes," said Kain, putting his paws on a chair to get his head up to eye level with the papers Clef was holding. "This is certainly very strange. Did- might I ask if 3999 had any particular fixation on the Scarlet King?"

Talloran shook his head. "I- I think it was just a good avenue to create suffering. This isn't nearly a majority of all the things that happened. I was- I _was_ so many of the anomalies, the ones with the really bad containment procedures." Draven crossed the room and put a hand on his back, but the scarred researcher just flinched and went back to scribbling. "I'll take some amnestics later," he muttered.

Clef frowned and read a few more lines, his eyes stabilizing to neon green and a brown that was very close to black. “God damnit,” he said, "That's what the kid was on about-" and then grabbed a paper box of what smelled like probably shrimp and rice and headed out the door. The screen rattled as it slammed behind him.

"Hey," Draven shouted.

Kain started after him, but sighed as he heard the shriek of the Jeep’s wheels. A few small flames were left in the driveway, but Alto Clef was very much gone. “Well,” he said, mostly to himself. “I wish I could say that was unexpected, but it would be borderline negligent of me to _expect_ anything from Clef.”

At the table, Draven had returned to trying to comfort his boyfriend, as well as beginning a vain attempt to pull the pen out of his hands. “Do you need to bunk here for the night?” he asked, glancing over at Kain. At the same time, Talloran finally slumped down limply over the notebook and pen, rubbing his forehead.

“Do you have a secure phone line?”

“Yeah, someone from the Foundation monitors it for sure but it’s safe otherwise. Handheld receiver in the back- do you need me to dial it?”

“I’ll manage,” said Kain. "I should contact the Erikesh Codex staff, first." He climbed onto the couch and produced a phone from a coat pocket with a little trouble. "Call Researcher Sen, Two-Three-Erikesh."

No answer. _Researcher Sen was killed in an accident three days ago,_ the phone chirped.

"Researcher Cassalanter, Two-Three-Erikesh. Dr. Crow speaking."

No answer. The phone kept ringing until Kain ended the call.

His fur was bristling nervously. He had never quite gotten used to the feeling of one's fur standing on end- like the hair on the back of your neck, but worse. And angrier. "Call Dr. Edwin Biggs. Dr. Crow speaking." There was a soft beep. "Access code remora, peanut butter, six-seven-one. Level Four clearance."

The phone rang. A voice answered.

"Crow? Damn, I was getting worried. Tried to call you about an hour ago but there was no answer- Cassalanter was found dead in the artifact storage wing. We think she got hit by a cognitohazard, but we're not sure what. Antimemetics has her desk quarantined, shooed me out of the office. After Jameson shot himself that's just me and the new kid left, and I haven't been able to get into contact with him either."

Kain pressed a button. "Bring up the list of Erikesh Codex researchers," he said to the phone. "Excuse me, Edwin."

\- Dr. Edwin Biggs, Head Researcher

\-- Dr. Ricardo Jameson _(deceased, awaiting replacement)_

\-- Dr. Diana Cassalanter _(deceased, awaiting replacement)_

\-- Dr. Rachael Walter _(missing)_

\-- Researcher M. Sen _(deceased, awaiting replacement)_

 _\--_ Researcher "Grail"

"Where's Dr. Walter?"

"Had to report her missing the day before yesterday. She didn't disappear _during_ a breach, but we had a lot of on site commotion that day and I don't think she's going to be back. I'd be careful if I were you, Crow."

"Shit," said Draven softly, leaning over the couch to get a look at the small screen. He returned to rubbing Talloran's shoulders, frowning a little more deeply. "They're _all_ dead?"

"Send me everything you've got about the origins of the Scarlet King," Kain said. "In paper, if the security rules about digital are still holding, but I want it in my office tomorrow. And- I think right after that, you should go home and quite possibly apply for amnestics."

The phone beeped again, interrupting the call, and Kain glanced down. There was a notification, from the alert line used for high-ranking personnel.

_Containment breach, SCP-166._

* * *

Meri saw the shape coming through the translucent glass that blocked off the corridor, and she snarled. It was, for all intents and purposes, the snarl of a very large and very angry animal, with many very sharp teeth. She did not make such sounds often, primarily because the first time she had properly practiced the woman in charge of security footage had panicked and called in backup, and Meri had had to explain that it was sort of a spur of the moment decision, prompted by something she had read in a book.

It was a deep snarl, and she could feel her throat vibrating with it. 

Any sane person, upon hearing this sound, would probably have thought that they had made a wrong turn, and gone down the corridor that led to something deadly and carnivorous- and would not have been entirely wrong in that assumption. Alto Clef, on the other hand, pulled his lips back from his teeth and growled back. 

(It was not, even he had to admit, a very impressive growl.)

“Meri?” he called. There was a brief pause in the snarling, and he opened the door (using an old access card of Adams’ that he’d stolen more years ago than he wanted to think about right now) and poked his head inside. “Uh. I know you probably- definitely don’t recognize me, but probably just the general fact that I haven’t gone batshit should be good enough for me to be an authority on _we need to go now.”_

“You’re my father?”

The containment alarms began to wail.

 _Say something emotional_ , thought the part of Clef that was maybe still Francis. _Say it’s going to be all right._

What he actually said was, “Search your feelings, Luke, and let’s fucking move!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grail's outfit in this chapter was decided on by committee as the most "tacky gay Classics scholar goth" getup possible. (And of course his first name as well.)
> 
> I appreciate everyone who's left comments/kudos so far! :) Hopefully I'll be able to keep updating this pretty regularly, and hopefully I'll be able to stick to my original seven-chapter outline for Symbolic Purposes.
> 
> Title from Sons and Daughters, by the Decemberists.


	4. and throw your mercy down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clef and Meri break into a Wendy's, and try to work things out.  
> The Linguist calls up some contacts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tragically, no Talloraven in this chapter, but they'll be in the next chapter a lot (as will several members of the Bright family, who only pop in for a moment here.) Warning for some references to SCP 231 and 4231, i.e. more direct than in the previous chapters. This chapter's title is from Mercy Down by Shayfer James.

Jack Bright was not- despite rumors to the contrary- in the habit of spontaneously hanging up on the O5 Council if they, for some reason, decided to actively contact him. About two minutes after the breach alarms for 166 went off, he received a call from a very secret number. He answered it, listened for half a second, and immediately hung up. He suppressed the brief urge to throw his phone down the nearest garbage chute as it began to ring again, and took a deep breath. 

“This better be good,” he said.

“Well, I'm glad you decided to listen t-”

Jack closed his eyes and hung up again. He should call back. How _ever,_ the O5 line was unreachable from a phone like his- they would call you when they called you. Hopefully not soon. 

The sitewide breach alarm suddenly began to blare, and at the same time Jack’s phone rang. Again. This time, when he picked it up with the intent to make an excuse about the alarms, he listened for a few more seconds. And then he shoved the phone into his pocket and started running.

* * *

> INCIDENT REPORT
> 
> At least five sites have experienced a catastrophic containment systems failure caused by an attack from anomalous entities believed to be affiliated with SCP-[][][][]. Contact is yet to be established with Site-7, Site-24, or Provisional Site 6112-A. 
> 
> Warheads have been detonated at two Foundation sites, as per security protocols. All staff are instructed to make attempts to reinstate containment procedures and wait for further instructions.

* * *

> O5 COUNCIL MEMORANDUM Re: Mass Breach
> 
> It seems unlikely in the current state of affairs that we will be able to restore containment at any site, with the possible exception of Site-19. Multiple members of Foundation staff appear to have gone rogue, potentially including O5-06. It is to be assumed that 06 has defected and is hostile towards the Foundation. Stand by for further information about whether to send orders to 2000.
> 
> Site-01 is currently still maintaining integrity. GOC forces are scheduled to arrive shortly. Unconfirmed reports indicate the GOC has already detonated several weapons of mass destruction near the areas where the hostile entities are ‘emerging.’ 
> 
> O5-02

_Site-01 lost outside communication 20 seconds after this message was sent._

* * *

“You look like you’re doing a little better,” said Clef. He hadn’t _stolen_ the Land Rover. It was Foundation property, and he had the credentials for it. He’d had to shoot a few guys on his way out, though, and that would probably make them pretty mad at him as soon as the whole Scarlet King thing was dealt with.

“It’s the air,” mumbled Meri. She had her window rolled down. Her hair was in her face. Before they left, she’d put on some sweatpants- not that she really thought it mattered with the fur and all. The seatbelt was a little too much pressure, so she left it off and leaned out the window as they drove down a road that probably shouldn’t have existed. The light was the white-blue that comes from a clear sky. 

In the sunlight, the hair on her arms was the kind of light brown that catches light in it. She breathed in sky. They’d ended up in America somehow, she guessed. Big technicolor billboards, big fields of corn. 

“So, how about those books?” said Clef. He wished he knew how to talk to a kid. She wasn’t even a kid at this point, she was twenty- _two._ He remembered when he’d taken her to the convent, and how the tiny points of her teeth had clamped onto the back of his hand. There were fangs gleaming in her mouth now, like a goddamn wolf. He should have paid more attention.

“They’re mine. That’s what.”

Meri had grabbed only three books. They were sitting under her feet, in the front of the Land Rover. She sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“Don’t you think it’s kinda stereotypical to be hauling around something by Tolkien? I mean, it looks like you didn’t bring a bible or anything, but-”

Meri snarled, just a little. Just enough to feel better.

“How long’d it take for you to learn how to growl like that?”

“I practiced, because I heard something described in a book and I thought I could scare people away more easily.” She paused briefly. “It happened on its own, the first time I bit someone badly enough to bleed- I wasn’t in a fight. They were doing a medical checkup, and I didn’t want the doctor to do what she was doing. So I bit her. I didn’t realize I was snarling until later, when the blood got in my mouth.” Meri grimaced, and opened her mouth a little to fill it with the taste of flowing air.

Clef said softly, “And the blood- what was it like?”

“There’s no power in taken blood,” said Meri, and she did not speak again. Clef decided to wait a count of five, and then he started fiddling with the radio to tune into Foundation frequencies. Most of them were down, but he did stumble across some GOC cross-chatter- it didn’t look good. The air was going to start smelling of fallout soon. Probably, hopefully, both of them were weird enough to be unaffected.

Beside him, Meri prayed. Her sharp fingernails had turned to brass talons, and they clicked softly against the rosary beads.

An hour rolled past. Clef tasted floodwater and clay.

Another hour.

"So uh, you want to rob a McDonald's or something?" he said. They were on real, material roads now, weaving around cars full of refugees. Most of the cars weren't moving. Most of the cars were empty. Bloody footprints trailed off the shoulder of the road. There were huddled, dirty groups on the edge of the asphalt here and there, like roadkill. Still alive, but with eyes that- well, they looked like roadkill. Dusty and crushed.

"What's wrong with them?"

"Probably the Scarlet King."

A dust devil ate its way through the long grass in the distance. Clef cut offroad towards the nearest truck stop, honking loudly at a vacant-eyed truck driver.

"He had blood on his mouth," said Meri.

" _Or_ ketchup," said Clef. "Stay in the car."

He had just stepped out when he heard the crunch of bare feet on gravel. Meri opened the trunk and pulled out a shock blanket, wrapping the foil around her shoulders and the bottom half of her face. 

"I don't think I like being in the car," she said. "This should be enough." A lock of golden-brown hair fell across her face and obscured her yellow eye, and Clef squinted thoughtfully. You _couldn't_ see her very well under the blanket. He did have...several guns. It was probably safe.

The place was locked. Clef kicked the door and it broke open with- honestly, less effort than it should have. Guess they hadn’t changed the lock in some time. “So these are just restaurants along the highway?” asked Meri, her voice a little muffled by the foil shock blanket.

“Uh. Yeah. For people who do long-distance trips, mostly. And tourists.” He waved vaguely at the racks of stuffed animals and snack cakes near the door. The truckstop seemed empty, so Clef headed for the Wendy’s and began rifling around behind the counter. It didn’t seem like it would be too hard to start the machinery up- some of it was still on, actually. The ice cream was cold. “There might be someone here,” he called, frowning. 

Meri began checking each isle of the truck stop in order. There was one that was all candy and packs of cookies, and one that was all greeting cards. She pulled out a card with a dove on it and was inspecting the inside when she heard a pattering of footsteps on the linoleum. Meri raised her head and snarled.

“What the fuck? Is that one of those monsters?”

“I’m gonna go look,” said a slightly gruffer voice. Meri narrowed her eyes as a flashlight beam swept across them. “Nah, it’s just a hobo. Hey you-”

Gunshot.

Meri jumped, the blanket dropping from her face as the man crumpled, clutching his knee. There was a dark streak on the ground. She backed up, peering cautiously towards the front of the truckstop as she fumbled with the blanket. Clef was looking through a rack of lottery tickets and fifty-cent gum, the gun already holstered. “We should get out of here,” he said, and his voice was like- or it _was-_ the spell of gunpowder. “I got some food. Grab anything else you need and-”

A hand fell on Meri’s shoulder. The younger of the two voices.

Several things happened in order.

A brief look of confusion passed over the man’s face. “What are _you?”_ he mumbled. His hand tightened slightly on her shoulder as she half-turned, yellow eye narrowing to brilliant gold. The young man’s breathing stuttered.

She moved. 

Clef was not as quick as he used to be, and he was not as quick as Meri, and he did not even have the barrel of the gun lined up before the young man fell to the floor. The pool of blood spread quickly. There was a curve of white rib visible in the florescent light. (There should not have been time for the act of violence. It takes time, to get someone's heart out through their ribcage. There was only a single instant, and the young man was dead. Reality trembled like the plucked string of a harp.)

Slowly, and trembling a little, Meri clutched her hands against her chest, red to the wrists in blood.

"Hey, it's okay," said Clef, uncertainly. He reached out to touch her shoulder and she flinched away. Full-body shudder. Well, that was all right. He didn't much like being touched either. "It's okay," he said again. His throat tightened around the words, like he was out of practice. He was, of course. Clef was more the kind of person who would chew out a panicky field agent and then back off long enough to see if they'd sink or swim, and, well, it was sad for some people. Working with anomalies didn't give you leeway, though. "It's okay. Uh- see here. He had a gun," he added, stooping down and inspecting the body. 

The older man was making a soft, strangled sound somewhere between a sob and a scream. "Shut _up,"_ Clef snapped at him.

 _Never mind the soft insides spread out across the chest, and the gap just the size for a real skinny girl's hand to be forced through the ribcage. Never mind that you didn't see it happen. Did you think the kid was gonna be anything_ but _a reality bender? She already was, just in a way that people didn't find threatening. The threats were all to her, not to the staff. Not to anybody else._

"Sometimes shit's rough. You couldn't tell for sure he was armed, but in this kind of situation- two guys holed up in a truckstop during the apocalypse, managed to hold it for this long? Approached the people who broke in like they thought they were gonna win the fight? Both of them for sure have weapons. Aggressive body language." He glanced sideways at Meri. There were long strings of gooey, dark blood dripping off her hands, but she was shaking a little less. Looking away, focusing on the Hallmark cards on the shelf. "You're on a little bit of a hair trigger right now, but you did. You did a good job."

"What about him?" she asked finally, looking over at the other man. He had mostly stopped sobbing- in shock, now.

"If he hasn't died yet, he probably won't. There's stuff around here, he'll be fine," said Clef, and was relieved that he was able to lie again. "Let's grab the food and get out. Help yourself to some candy bars, okay?"

It took a little while to get Meri out to the Land Rover, where she slumped down into a shock blanket heap in the passenger seat. The blood had mostly dried now, and was flaking off her skin. "The chocolate part of the Frosty machine was busted," said Clef, handing her a paper cup of ice cream and a stack of napkins. "I've refilled some of our water bottles, too. Wash up. Or don't."

"Thank you," said Meri at last. "For how long are we planning to ration water?" She rubbed a dry napkin over the backs of her hands and then gave it up, turning instead to the ice cream. 

"You can use some, it's fine. We've got, fuck, five gallons right now? And it looks like running water's still working in at least some places. Betcha bottled water won't last much longer, though." They were back on the road that shouldn't exist, away from the broken, roadkill-strewn asphalt of the real interstate, and the wandering weeping people with the dust on their faces. The sky was shocking electric-blue. Not bad. One of Clef's eyes rolled to match.

Meri squinted sideways at him. "Your eyes," she started, and then paused. She poured a little water into her cupped palm and began to rub it into the coating of half-dry gore. "Do you choose to have your eyes change like that?"

"It wasn't originally by choice, nah," said Clef. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Usually I don't pick the colors, either. It's green or blue or brown, in any shade. I chose that one just now, though. You want a burger? They're, uh. What's the Wendy's thing? Not frozen. Still cold, though, no time to heat them up. The fries are hot."

She reached over and grabbed a handful of fries out of the paper bag. The watery blood left dark fingerprints smudged on them, but she didn't seem to notice. "This is much better than the food at the Foundation," she said, "It must be the salt. Or the fats."

 _Or the blood,_ thought Clef, but what he said was, "You got any other questions?"

A few moments' silence. Meri absentmindedly sucked on one red claw, not seeming to notice she was doing so. Best not to bother her about it.

"Did my mother look like me?" she asked, and Clef came very close to driving off the road into a place that did not exist. He coughed a few times, and the red-clay water dripped down from the edge of his mouth. He wiped it on the collar of his floral shirt.

"I don't remember," he said. And that was true. He didn't remember her face anymore. Just the voice, and the hands, and the water. 

"Was she like me?"

"No." A beat. "Reality bender. Not like you. She, uh. Listen, at the risk of sounding like an idiot with no self-awareness, she wasn't a good person."

"Nobody should be like me. I'm glad she wasn't." Meri rolled down the window, bundling her cloud of golden-brown hair into a loose ponytail. There were flashes of light in it, like static electricity- no, that was just a trick of the sun. Clef hoped his answer was enough.

It was, for a while. Somehow, Meri's next question was worse.

"I dream about a girl who's on an operating table," she said. "The men there have masks, but they wear Foundation barcodes on their coats. Everything is cold and full of blood. Why do I know her? _What are they doing to her?"_

They were back on the roads that really existed, and they were stuck in traffic as people leaned out of car windows and shouted at each other. Again, bruised, hunched figures crouched on the shoulder of the interstate, with the broken glass bottles and the smears of roadkill-bones. A crow landed on the rearview mirror and croaked, loudly. Meri mimicked, not very well, and laughed as it tilted its head. Maybe she had forgotten the question. Did that mean he got to avoid answering?

"The girl," said Meri after some time. Clef was looking out the windshield, trying to locate the source of a distant patter of gunshots, and his hands went white-knuckled. "I can tell you know something."

"I don't know her name. I don't know why you dream about her. I could guess what they do there, but it wouldn't be more than what you already know- I wasn't involved in any of that, not as a member of the Foundation. That was back before I joined up. They found her at the same time they found me." 

"That's a nothing answer."

"Fine. She's the seventh bride of the Scarlet King. She has the seventh child of the King inside her, and they're doing some godawful thing to it and her because fucking _Montauk_ thought it would be a good idea to write the worst bullshit anybody could think of and try and make it into containment procedures because of his own half-baked life trauma. The other six have been born already, and-"

And. And and and. He spit out the words before there was any way of taking them back.

"And _you_ were the first one."

Meri turned, so fast that the seatbelt _bit_ her skin through her fur. She fumbled to unbuckle it with one hand, grimacing a little. "My mother was like _that?_ Like her? No- no, that's not right." It didn't _smell_ true. Clef didn't smell like guilt. He smelled like shame, and fear, and blood. "No, it must have been you. Did they do..." Her voice died. "It doesn't matter. Don't answer." And it really doesn't.

She could guess at enough of it, but what she knew was that her father was a strange, sad, angry man, and that he was trying very hard to love her.

Did she love him? Maybe, but right now she loved him in the half-pitying way that one loves strange, sad things. The way that one loves things that hurt the heart, and dead things that were alive, once.

She did not love him as a person, and she knew this. She did not even really _like_ him as a person. Maybe it would come in time, and maybe it would come if she prayed, and maybe it would come if she learned how to make her hands into weapons, heavy with gold and blood, Daughter of the Scarlet King, the enemy beyond the world. Maybe none of these things would work. She would wait and see. She had waited all her life.

Clef did not, in fact, answer. He hunched over the steering wheel and turned up the radio, one finger tapping on the dashboard. 

* * *

_Transcript of conversations recorded from the wreckage of Site-19. Speakers have been identified as Foundation Agent Laura Procne, Researcher "Grail", Horizon Initiative member Thomas McGann, and two unidentified voices assumed to be Horizon Initiative members._

McGann: “-traitorous little bastard that you are.”

Grail: “You did still come, though. Demon, four o’clock!”

_Two gunshots._

Grail: “Anyway, is that Joyeuse? Did you steal _Joyeuse_?”

Unidentified 1: “Thought it might come in handy, yeah. I’m jetlagged as all fuck though, coming here from Paris.”

Procne: “Is it anomalous, though?”

Grail: “It *is* supposed to have part of the Lance of Longinus forged into it, and that thing was, put mildly, anomalous as hell. What did happen to the spearhead, anyway? The one in Vienna is fake, and the Vatican only has part of it.”

Unidentified 2: “The GOC ended up in a shootout with some of our guys and got the Lance, but last we heard their Knights Templar faction had [REDACTED].”

_There follows a period of several intermittent gunshots, shouts, and noises from the entities which destroyed the site. The more dangerous vocalizations of the entities have been expunged from the audio file._

Grail (breathing heavily): “Given how many dead researchers are here, I guess they didn’t have a chance to evacuate- so 073 should still be around here somewhere, I hope. I don’t plan on risking this much on my own translation ability.” _A moment of static._ “Ah, she has level three sitewide. This should get us into what’s left of the humanoid wing. Requiescat in pace.”

McGann: “Requiescat.”

_Access panel beeps._

_Recording breaks apart as the group enters the humanoid containment wing. Record resumes from a monitoring device inside a Foundation van. In the background, Researcher Grail is speaking with SCP-073._

Procne (Sounding shaken): “I don’t think this van was designed for running people over like that.”

McGann: “Well now, at least it wasn’t one of those big spiky demons. That would’ve worked hell on the undercarriage.”

Unidentified 2: “I think we should try to get into the Library. I can find us a Way in time, but the nearest one I know of is- not particularly close.”

Procne: “Assuming the Library’s still safe. And that it'll let us in.”

Unidentified 2: “It might not take too kindly to the two of you, but I think we can make it inside without drawing too much attention. And it should still be safe. I think it will be the last place that is safe. And maybe we can get help from the Hand if we want to retrieve the other Spears.”

SCP-073 (distant, from the back of the van): “The Serpent which guards the Library was young before the King fell, but he is not older than the King. Still, I think it will hold the longest out of all creation. He is not- he is not my enemy.”

Unidentified 1: “I’m getting hungry. Have we reached the point in the apocalypse where it’s acceptable to just start looting?”

McGann: “I think we’re in the phase where we call it ‘requisitioning’ and we point this big sword at them, for sure.” _Laughter._

Grail (from the back of the van): “Hey, could someone toss me the amnestics, and also my meds? Something is coming off weirdly about this section.”

_A moment of fumbling._

Grail: “Damnit- damnit- _agh_!”

Unidentified 2: “Hold on!”

_There is a loud shattering sound, and Researcher Grail screams. An instance of one of the “King’s Demons” entities vocalizes from inside the van. A gunshot. From this point on, the recording becomes increasingly distorted and cuts out after another seven seconds._

McGann: “Is, ah. Is Grail alive?”

Unidentified 2: “Alive, but burned. Did one of the tablets explode?”

Grail: [Incomprehensible]

* * *

The Serpent coiled around his perch. He was not, strictly speaking, a _snake._ He might have been classified as a dinosaur, as he had been back when the History of the Redlands was written. (He was not, strictly speaking, a _he_ either, but it was interesting to exist as such.) He had feathers, and the feathers gleamed, green to violet to deep burnished metal- no metal that was found on Earth, but the warm fire-forging color of a metal all the same. 

Today he draped himself across the branches of the tree where Odin hung, and looked into the future. He looked for some time, and his iridescent tongue briefly tasted the air. Tasted blood. The Serpent sighed, and slipped down from the branches of the World-Tree, slithering away into the heart of the Library. He whispered some orders to the docents, who walked away as silently as ever, and then began to inspect the great stone-carved slabs which lined the room where he most often rested. Looking for a change.


	5. friendly fields and open roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Communication is hard, during the apocalypse. People get in contact anyway. The sun rises, and also sets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Alive? It's more likely than you think. This chapter turned out surprisingly lengthy. As a warning, there's some fairly detailed discussion of animal death in Clef and Meri's section.   
> Music- Never Quite Free by the Mountain Goats.

FOUNDATION MASS BROADCAST

_ Man has no dominion. The walls are broken and nothing-  _ nothing  _ will be left- the dark- the light- the dark is everywhere now. Everyone dies in it. The bells are ringing that seven is the number.  _ [A whining noise begins to overlay the broadcast, causing listeners to bleed from the nose and ears.]  _ New containment procedures to be enacted- new containment- the. The containment procedures are to listen to the bells, and-  _

[Single gunshot.]

_ Bastard. Let’s see- _

[Whining noise deactivates, after some fumbling.] 

END TRANSMISSION

* * *

Jack doesn’t mind roadtrips, or even the apocalypse (not that he’s stopped to think about it too much yet). He does mind that this is the fourth time Mikell has called him in twelve hours. He turns off his phone and puts it on the dashboard. “How are we doing with radiation?”

TJ looks down at the various sensors piled in his lap. The Geiger counter is clicking slowly. “Eight hundred?”

In the back of the car, Serra Argent is sprawled out across two seats and listening to a radio wired up to a rooftop antenna. She raises one headphone slightly to say, “Got HI chatter, but I can’t get Site-88. Sounds like there’s a major incursion going on in Atlanta.” Her phone buzzes, and she sighs. “Mikell is sending me texts telling you to turn on your phone.”

“Tell him we’re all running out of battery because of the end of the world,” Jack shoots back. “Hey, here’s a thought. There should be  _ somewhere  _ around here to get a decent drink, right? Let’s take ten minutes out of our incredibly busy running-from-demons schedule and do that instead.”

“Here’s another thought,” Serra says, her voice flattening with irritation. One hand is still fiddling with the radio dials to try and get  _ any  _ Foundation frequencies online. “You sit in the back with the body bag and have a drink, and I’ll drive.” She pokes the half-frozen body bag with one foot. There is water condensing in cold drops on it. (Now, in pure logical theory, it’s a good plan to have a spare body. In practice, the slowly thawing spare is slightly beyond even the level of discomfort that Serra would expect from an impromptu Bright roadtrip.)

“Yeah, okay. See if you can get Cimmerian on the line while I look for a liquor store.”

Serra pops the headphones back on. “What’s his access code?”

“Ten-Apple-Pie-Delta-Eight-Eight.”

She returns to fiddling with the radio, and sighs. “I’ve been trying, but it looks like all Foundation sites in the area have either been destroyed or switched onto local channels. I’m getting some evidence of radio chatter but it’s all encrypted.”

Another hour passes. They’re driving north, now. “We’ll be safer once we hit the plains states,” says Jack. TJ reads from the Geiger counter, sing-songing the numbers as they tick worryingly high. He realizes they’re too high, and he pauses. An expression of very grown-up worry briefly running across his face.

“Jack,” he says hesitantly.

“We’ll be fine. There’s iodine in the first aid kit. Keep an eye on the Kant counter, too.” The kit is by Serra, partially covered by the body bag. She immediately opens it and starts rationing out doses, hands steady. 

“Which one?”

Jack leans over, tapping the handheld Kant counter. “As long as it’s green we’ll be pretty much- well, not safe, but we can deal with it.” The counter is boxy, plated with metal that only gave way for a few color-coded gauges.

Mercifully, the counters swing back to normal once they pass what used to be Little Rock. 

Less mercifully- “Shit,” mutters Jack, slowing down. There are a pair of the... _ entities  _ on the road ahead of them, horse-sized and covered in long spikes. The asphalt cracks and decays where their steps fall. Horizon and the GOC call them the King’s Demons. The Foundation is a little more scientific about these things, and- from the limited broadcasts they’ve caught on the radio, at least- has decided to start calling them 2317-1. 

One of the demons turns its head and makes a sound like a bullwhip cracking. It lowers itself a little and stalks towards the car. Jack reverses, carefully. “Serra?”

“Yeah.” Her bullets have silver plating- she’s never run into anything that was immune. They’re reflective, in the low red light. “Do we know if they’re...killable?” 

“With our luck today, probably not. Can’t hurt to try, though,” Jack chirps, a little more shakily than usual. He squints, trying to figure out if the demons are far apart enough that he could squeeze the car between them. Not  _ quite  _ yet- if the closer one would just take one more step-

Serra rolls down the window a little, and the squeak makes the demon’s blind head snap up a little. Its tail twitches. 

One second. Jack’s fingers drum restlessly on the steering wheel.   
Two seconds. TJ puts his hands over the softly beeping Kant counter to try to muffle the noise.

Three seconds. The demon settles back on its haunches to spring.  
As it uncoils, the gunshot sounds.

At the beginning of its leap, the creature is knocked sideways, jaw exploding into a burst of shrapnel. A silver line is traced on the naked bone. It screams, stumbling and shaking its horned head. Jack slams his foot on the gas.

They hurtle past the stunned monsters, and Serra fires once more, twisting in her seat to aim behind them. The neat bullethole gutters black blood. “I think they’re mortal,” she says, perfectly in time with it falling to the ground. “They’re pretty sturdy, though.” 

Jack keeps driving, and he keeps trying not to think about the world ending. They’ll need gas, soon. Here and there they pass abandoned cars by the side of the road, and sometimes the traffic- a mass of bodies and unmoving cars and dust, is that a traffic jam?- is too thick to drive  _ on  _ the road and he veers off onto the shoulder and the swampy ditches. Crows circle overhead.

“I’m hungry,” TJ mutters.  
“We’ll stop somewhere,” Jack says. “Once it starts getting dark.” Is it going to get dark? He hasn’t seen the sun in a while, but the sky is still suffused with cloudy light. “A gas station or something.” 

The radio crackles, and Serra grabs for the headphones and pulls them back on. “Hello?”

She listens for a minute. “It’s Clef, I think,” she says, fiddling with the volume so everyone can hear. Jack leans back, one hand sort of, vaguely, still on the wheel.

“Hey, where are you?”

_ Damned if I know. We’re trying to outrun the end of the world here. _

“They said you’d gone rogue or something. ‘Course, I think I did too, so I guess we’re just both in the dark about what kind of circus is probably happening at O5 Command right now.”

_ Hmm.  _ The radio briefly broke into static.  _ Okay, listen, it looks like the Way network is broken open. I’ve been able to access some of the back roads without the Library’s defense shit coming after me, anyway.  _

Jack frowns. “You think it’s a problem on the Library’s end? Maybe it just doesn’t count you as Foundation anymore.” 

_ Or maybe the Foundation doesn’t exist as an organization anymore, hey? It’s not like we’ve heard anything from the Council since whatever the hell happened this morning on the mass broadcast.  _

He pauses. Blinks, looks out at the fields of corn that are now visible out the windows. A bitter smoke rises in the distance. “Maybe,” says Jack. It feels like something heavy is being slowly peeled off of his bones. 

_ The gunshot. You think that might’ve been your rodeo clown? _

“We should probably meet up somewhere,” says Jack, ignoring the question. “We’re in...fuck, probably Oklahoma by now.”

_ Can’t do that right now.  _ Another burst of static-  _ I figure out a better solution for Meri-. _

“You’re breaking up,” Serra says, fiddling with the radio. She looks up at Jack. “I can’t get him back. Probably went out of range.”   


* * *

Clef swears under his breath at the radio. They’re on back roads, the sky rippling in sunset colors. It’s a little early, for the sunset. He hasn’t been able to get in contact with Crow, either on his intermittent radio broadcasts or on the phone. He checks his phone again- no signal, not too much battery left, either. 

“At least it’s quieter now,” says Meri, staring out into the trees. She picked up a motorcycle helmet with a visor from the last store they broke into, though it only fits awkwardly over her stubby horns. Clef could swear they’re getting longer by the hour- her claws and teeth are definitely more pronounced. Maybe it’s the air. Maybe it’s the King. 

“Quieter.” Not quite a question. He pulls over onto the edge of the road, where the trees overhang.

“All the cars, and the shouting,” she said. “The smoke.”

It’s not quite autumn yet, just a little bit of yellow and orange starting to form at the edges of the treeline. He opens the door of the jeep, tasting the air. He’s jumpy, he knows that, but for now it seems safe here. The King’s Demons are targeting cities, mostly, and the busy interstates. Places susceptible to chaos. What is there to enforce chaos on in the woods? 

Not that he likes forests much.

One of his eyes rolls from green to a soft blue, the irises jostling for a second as he looks out into the trees and checks with one hand to make sure all his guns are still in order. The other stays hazel. “We could probably make camp here,” he says. “I’m going to scout a little ways out. Stay in the car.”

The sky is fairly clear as the sun goes down, though there’s an orange-red glow on the horizon that must be fire. Once he gets back to the car he’ll check the atlas to find out which city it is. He walks along the edge of the road a little and checks his phone- still no signal. There are a couple of birds calling in the woods, which is a good sign- tends to mean there’s no monsters. Still, he knows better than to trust just a voice, and looks around until he sees a somewhat bedraggled robin sitting on a branch and occasionally chirping. “You look like shit, buddy,” he mutters to it.

Behind him, there’s a high yelp and a brief sound of scrabbling, and he immediately wheels around with his shotgun starting to rise to his shoulder. 

“...What the-”

Meri has caught a squirrel. At least, it probably was a squirrel, at some point. She blinks up at him, the skin around her mismatched green-gold eyes splattered with blood, and slowly removes the carcass from her mouth. “I-” she starts. Looks down at what used to be the squirrel. She tears up a little. “I thought I could catch it for food- I’m really hungry- but I bit down on it too hard, I think.”

Clef blinks, and tentatively takes the dead squirrel out of her hand. “Kinda impressive you were able to grab this thing in your mouth,” he says, and pokes carefully at it. The heart is gone, and the entire chest is smashed. This doesn’t seem to comfort Meri at all, and he fumbles his words a little. “It- huh. It probably...didn’t have time to feel anything? Real quick.” 

He glances over at her again, and sighs. “Here.” It takes a second of rummaging to find a cleaning wipe in the pile of supplies they’ve amassed in the car, and it’s a little bloody already from his hands when he gives it to Meri, but. It’s something, right?

She sniffles a little and cleans herself up. 

“I bet I can get some meat off of this, if you want it, y’know, actually cooked.” he says. They’re well stocked up on junk food and snacks, but that’s probably not as good for her as meat would be. He can probably shoot something else to supplement what’s left of this squirrel, though his camp cooking isn’t great. Out of practice.

Meri nods, hesitantly.

It doesn’t take long for him to have a small fire going. It maybe took a  _ little  _ reality bending, though- an effort. A lot of muttered swearing. Meri finds some wild blackberries, sniffing at them curiously before popping one into her mouth. (She was all torn up about the squirrel, but she’s been perked up a lot more since getting that blood in her mouth. It was a requirement in her meals back in containment- he should be doing a better job of getting it for her.) 

“Do you think we’re the only people left?” asks Meri, as she eats.

“Nah. You heard Jack on the radio, right?”

She seems more or less satisfied with this. She’s heard  _ rumors  _ that Jack Bright is immortal somehow, from the containment staff gossip. That means he’ll make it through okay, right?

Clef gives her the sleeping bag. “I’m keeping watch most of the night anyway,” he says. He’s got a nest of shock blankets in the front seat of the jeep, and the last thing Meri’s really properly aware of is him carefully counting bullets, a half-assembled gun lying on the dashboard.

She dreams about the ocean. Further than the ocean. There’s a cliff by the sea, and the cliff is thick with pain. In the dream she puts her hands out against the stone to brace it up. The stuff that flows down over her hands is saltwater- no, it’s warm. It’s tears. 

She dreams about masks. White walls carved deeply with white words. Every two feet, in the hallway she walks down, there is a long nail of iron buried in the linoleum floor. The things that hum on either side of the doors, at the end of the hallway- what are those? They’re rounded and made of shining metal, and attached to a boxy little gauge that clicks up and down. The roof of the building is torn away by a vast and dripping hand.

Someone laughs. The laughter isn’t a voice, it’s just the roaring of a fire. It doesn’t smell like salt here anymore, it just smells like blood. She knows where she is, suddenly, and she runs to open the doors. There’s a person in danger- on the other side of the sea.

Dawn.

Meri’s fur is slick and heavy with sweat, when she wriggles out into the frosty premorning air. Her chest feels heavy and raw. 

“Okay there?” asks Clef, his brow furrowing a little above his smile. He doesn’t want to  _ press,  _ or anything. 

“I dreamed about the girl,” she says. She straightens up, fur fluffing as a wind blows through the wood. (Around her bare feet, a few flowers bloom, out of season. Snowdrops, maybe? Something small and white and blue.) “We need to go there. On the other side of the sea. It’s not so far from where I grew up.”

“No.”

“We have to.”

“No. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’ll go myself,” she says.

He bites back a snort. “How?”

“I can. I don’t know how yet.” 

There are flowers around her feet. Clef glances down, and his smile fades a little. “We’ll see. We’d have to go through the proper Ways, and I’m still not sure  _ that’s  _ safe either.” At least if they run into the Hand both of them are clearly anomalous- but that won’t be enough to get them safe passage if someone recognizes him. 

“So we find a Way.” Her voice is strong. Fiercer. He glances over at her again and sighs, checking the atlas.

“I don’t know what’s happened to the Three Portlands, but that might get us there faster. And we’re just a few hours’ drive away now.” 

When they reach the top of the hill, his phone rings. He stops, pulls it out- one bar of service, it’s Draven calling-

“Hey, kid.”

_ “Oh, holy fuck. We didn’t know when you’d pick up.” _

“Phone service is kinda busted. Talloran still with you, then?”

_ “Yeah. He’s doing- really well, actually. He says he feels like the world’s finally adjusted so he’s the normal one,”  _ Draven adds, with a short, strained laugh.  _ “Also apparently he had a  _ bunch  _ of apocalypse prep stuff in our basement.”  _

“Glad you’re all right. I’m putting you on speaker so you can say hi to Meri.”

_ “Meri’s with you? Er. Hey.” _

“Hi.”

_ “Okay. So, James has been thinking, and he says he’s sticking to the idea that Montauk doesn’t do anything. He’s- let me put him on.”  _ There’s a moment of fumbling, before Talloran’s voice came through.  _ “Dash Seven. She’s not causing this, right? So obviously we’re in an iteration where that child’s not what breaks the seventh seal. It’s something else, something that’s going to- it’ll- it felt like a song _ .” He takes a breath.  _ “3999 wanted it dead. Didn’t know what it was. It’s important, though.” _

“He’s right,” says Meri, softly.

Clef’s jaw works silently as he parses this out. “If we’re doing some kind of bullshit here, you’re getting dragged along too,” he says, finally. 

Meri’s stomach twists itself up with something in between anxiety and relief. She  _ knows  _ this is going to be dangerous, but. Well. They just have to go. There isn’t any other ending, now.

* * *

James takes a deep, steadying breath. As far as apocalypses went, this one is almost...understated. Maybe that makes it more real. They left home on foot, because the road was choked with cars. There are still cars all over the roads, and pulled off into ditches, but most of them are empty now. The people driving them have either been stricken with the King’s encroaching madness or just...run out of gas, and started walking.

Through the trees, he can see instances of- what were they supposed to be called now? 2317-K-1? prowling along the interstate. They aren’t very smart- seem more reactive than anything else. 

Draven got his leg slashed up pretty badly, early on. It didn’t seem like it was infected, though, and they’d put it back together decently with some bandages and antiseptic and the needle and thread James had in one of his first-aid kits. He’s good at putting body parts back together. Much too good- but at least that meant he could do it  _ fast,  _ while Draven bit down on his glove to deal with the pain. 

“Usually,” says James, as they watch the sun come up over the Blue Ridge mountains, “You die pretty early on. I’m glad you’re doing well so far.” 

“James,” answers Draven, “I have  _ no  _ idea how to deal with that statement. Come here.” He presses his partner in against him- a faint smell, still, that’s like amnestics and antiseptic Foundation hospital wings, but mostly just dirt and smoke. Everything smells like dirt and smoke, though there’s a faint smell of pine down from the foothills.

James closes his eyes, for a while. And then in the distance he hears one of the monsters screech, and he straightens up. “How’s your leg?”

“It’s holding up fine. You want some food?” He hands Talloran a granola bar, before he can actually answer. It has chocolate chips in it.   
  
"...Thanks." He won't eat more than a few bites, probably. They'll need it later. Draven leans his weight on the thick, knobbly branch he's been using as a crutch, and they start walking again.

* * *

“And this means- to emit a sound. So  _ tolling  _ would work, yes?” The Linguist is sitting in a room full of stone slabs, every inch of surface etched deeply with writing. The ceiling is made of black glass, with a star-map carved deeply into it. The pieces of the Codex are laid out on the floor in front of him as he scribbles notes.

073, Cain, thinks this might as well happen. It’s been centuries since he was in the Library, though the Serpent doesn’t bear him any particular ill will. It’s definitely better than the alternative of sitting in the ruins of 17 waiting to see what would happen. “The rest of this looks pretty good,” he says mildly, picking up a page of translation notes. “I wish we had the rest of this sentence, though. Is this all the Foundation has on the topic?”

Thomas is restless. He shifts his gun on his hip and looks out into the hallway, where people are running back and forth in a flurry of anxiety. From what he’s heard, they’re evacuating the books and artifacts from any rooms directly connected to “the main construct.” (He’ll be honest, he doesn’t understand half of what the Librarians say.) Blaise paces, his hands deep in his pockets and Joyeuse hanging at his hip. R leans against a wall, her dark eyes fixed on the lantern-flame.

Agent Procne crosses her arms. She’s a very still woman, by nature. Her hair and suit are a little rumpled from their turbulent trip into the Library, but she’s doing a good job of regaining her composure. She stands close to the linguist, lips pressing together a little with worry.

Suddenly, her head snaps to the side, eyes narrowing as she picks up on a  _ sound.  _ Something soft and faintly rasping. Like the stirring of silk, maybe, or a bird’s wing.

There’s not exactly a moment when the Serpent enters the room. There’s just a second between it being not-there and it being  _ there,  _ terrifyingly material, slick with deep green feathers and glimmering in the light of the lantern they brought into the dark storage room with them. Its eyes reflect star clusters, and blue and gold spacedust nebulae. 

“Fuck,” says Thomas, taking a step back. His hand stops just shy of freeing the gun from his belt- he knows, at least, what this is. That doesn’t stop the hairs along his spine from standing up. The other Horizon operatives are frozen in place, watching the movements of the coils that wrap around the room. Blaise puts his hands up, palms forward. 

“May we help you?” asks the linguist, and does a very good job of keeping his voice steady. His smudged eyeshadow glimmers black and gold in the lanternlight, and the faint light of the Serpent’s eyes as it lowers its head a little to gaze at them. 

Its head tilts, with the sound of pages turning.  _ The linguist. Grail. I have something that will be useful for you.  _ A coil moves, and it produces a long chest of polished wood, held in the loops of the tail. Shakily, Grail rises to his feet and takes the chest. It’s heavy- Procne moves forward quickly and helps steady the other end.

“What…”

The Serpent arches his neck, silently.  _ You’ll figure it out. You made it this far. The others you need are already on their way to the Montauk Point.  _ A length of sapphire tongue runs between his teeth. He turns to Cain.  _ You have a chance, here. I am very sorry it took until the end days for you to get one. _

Cain shrugs. “What’s done is done,” he says, in the old language. The Serpent makes a sound that could be laughter.

The chest holds a sword. Is it a sword? It’s made in the Roman style, the hilt inlaid with carnelian, but the tip of the blade is serrated. Grail takes it out of its wrappings carefully, and for a moment there’s the image of something else overlaid with it- something long and shining and made, maybe, of bone. The pommel gleams ivory-white, and holding it too long makes his skin twitch and crawl. 

“A spear,” he says, putting it quickly down and drawing his hand away. He flexes his fingers, looking down at his palm. Half-expecting it to blister or blacken. “The last of the King’s spears?”

But when he looks up, the Serpent is gone. 

Blaise’s nose wrinkles a little. “You know where the Montauk Point is?”

“Cornwall.”

R makes a note. “We can open a Way there. I’m not really pleased with the idea of opening a Way into potentially hostile territory, though.” 

Shouldering the spear-sword in its sheath, Grail tenses his jaw. “We won’t be able to get into the facility itself, even if Cain comes along. It’s the highest security Foundation site there is, and there are six of us. We can make it to the coast, though, if we’re lucky. It might be enough.” 

On the other side of the Way, the sky is sunset-red, the darker reaches scattered with stars. Fire rolls along the coast, and the blackened trees. Stark and terrible in the distance, the building that holds 231 rises in a tangle of barbed wire and halogen above the ruined roads.


End file.
